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Twitter has today announced that it has brought suit in a federal court in San Francisco against 5 of the ‘most aggressive’ spammers and tool builders who facilitiate distributing spam on its service.

This morning, we filed suit in federal court in San Francisco against five of the most aggressive tool providers and spammers. With this suit, we’re going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal. Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter.

Twitter also says that it isn’t stopping there, launching a new anti-spam measure against @mention spam earlier this week. It also uses its t.co link shortner to analyze link traffic, to see whether it leads to malicious content.

If you’re a regular Twitter user then you know exactly how bad the problem can be at times. Mentioning the right keyword or topic can lead to a flood of replies that make using the service unpleasant. Every once in a while the company makes a sweep, resulting in a drop in follower counts for some users as it clears out a swath of these spammers. But it looks like those efforts have not been enough, and now Twitter is taking it to the source by trying to weed out the worst offenders.

The company says that it is comitted to fighting spam “on all fronts” using every tool at its disposal, saying that “today marks an important step forward.”

Hopefully this is more effective than trying to attack email spammers by hitting up big players. There’s always someone there to take up the mantle.